Should the Navy greatly expand its use of the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary as a training ground? In a Northwest take on what’s becoming an international debate, citizens concerned about the sanctuary off Washington’s coast are fighting the Navy’s plans to boost its Quinault Underwater Training Range from 48 square miles to 1,854 square miles.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and other enviro groups weighed in recently, noting that the Navy allowed just 45 days to comment on a draft environmental impact statement (at the same time the same enviros were supposed to be reviewing another massive DEIS for naval operations off North Carolina).

The NRDC letter has apparently slipped off the group’s Web site, but here is how it was summarized, according to the Google cache:

This letter summarizes NRDC’s response to a massive naval extension proposed of the Keyport Range Complex in Washington state. The proposed expansion would extend the Quinault Underwater Tracking Range site over 1700 square nautical miles in the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, a region of extraordinary biological diversity that provides habitat or migratory area for 29 species of marine mammals including eight threatened or endangered species of whales such as the highly endangered Southern Resident killer whales, otters and pinnipeds. NRDC believes the Navy fails to consider a variety of other options, alternatives, and common sense mitigation measures — some employed by other navies — that would reduce the impacts.